The construction of the modern city and the management of water resources in Italy, 1880-1920

This article examines how industrialization and demographic growth influenced the exploitation and management of water resources in Italian cities, during a crucial period of modernization of the urban system. First, it focuses on the functional crisis that growing demands for domestic and industrial use posed to traditional water collection and drainage methods. Second, it provides an analysis of the construction of new networks for urban water supply and removal and shows that changes to infrastructure were driven not only by hygienic concerns but also by the functional reorganization of the urban system. Finally, I argue that water management deeply transformed the ecology of the emerging modern city, since it resulted in the creation of a unitary and mechanized water circuit, in new forms of soil and water pollution, and in relations between cities and the territorial water system.